Presenters M – O

PRESENTERS M – O

Mzukisi MaketaMzukisi Maketa is one of the newest presenters at FMR, presenting every friday night from 22:00 to 00:00 and NightBeat is the programme.

After serving at Musica for a number of years, Mzukisi Maketa took a leap of faith and quit his regular job and followed his childhood dream which led him to Fine Music Radio. During his early age he was greatly fascinated by the art of radio and the power it has as a medium and he used to dream of doing it one day.

Mzukisi has a varied music taste and listens from Jazz, Rock & Pop, World Music to Classical and finds a great deal of pleasure in watching comedy and drama movies. He loves spending time with nature as way of unwinding and enjoys his traditional food; at the same time he finds delight in Asian and Italian cuisine.

The kind of sound you can expect from his programme is jazzy vibes in between easy listening music.
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Graham McCullochFor as long as I can remember, I have loved language, both the spoken and written word. From about the age of 10, I started compiling and recording my own “news bulletins”, making speeches and conducting interviews with celebrities, all “scripted” and performed by myself, on a battery-operated portable tape recorder which I received as a birthday present.

After graduating from Stellenbosch University, I became an announcer / producer with the SABC in Sea Point in early 1978. Over the next two-and-a-half years, I earned my radio “stripes” as a bilingual radio presenter, interviewer and news reader on the then Radio Good Hope, initially presenting the afternoon drive slot and later switching to the breakfast session. I was privileged to work with and learn live radio from seasoned broadcasters such as Pierre Marais, Percy Sieff, Tony Hatt, Jan Cilliers, Nico de Kock, Hennie Pietersen, Peter Merrill, Patrick Kohler and Nigel Murphy, to name a few.

I left the SABC to pursue a business career in mid-1980, but continued my association with radio as an occasional mid-day and late-night music programme presenter and regional news reader on Springbok Radio and the old English and Afrikaans Services until the end of the 80’s. My business career, which spanned over 25 years, took me into the fields of Human Resources, PR and Events Management, Organisational & Change Management, Executive Recruitment and General Management. During this time, in addition to my managerial roles, I found myself multi-tasking as a functions presenter, workshop facilitator, trainer and MC.

Since 2010, my career as an independent consultant has allowed me to find time for a return to radio, something which had been on my “bucket list” for over 20 years! Thus, in June 2010, just before the start of the Soccer World Cup, I went on air as a bilingual FMR news reader, having the great pleasure of initially working with Rodney Trudgeon for the first year or so of my FMR career, but also, on occasion, teaming up with Karen Blumer, Paul Wise and Michael van Ryneveld. From mid-2011, I teamed up with regular Friday “Champagne Breakfast” presenter, Mark Jennings, reading the 07h00 and 08h00 English and Afrikaans news respectively. Over time, I have added the early Monday and Thursday morning news stints to my FMR duties, pairing up with Rodney once more on those mornings. Since April 2016, I have included the 06h30 “newspaper headlines” segment to my duties, sharing the top news stories of the day from Die Burger in Afrikaans with FMR listeners.

It remains an ongoing delight to experience the exhilaration of live radio. I aim to do as professional a job as I can in presenting the “breaking news” of the day to FMR listeners as they rise and shine on Monday, Thursday and Friday mornings.

Rouxnette MeiringI discovered my calm in the chaos with FMR in 2008, reading the news in Afrikaans and later presenting Kaapse Dagboek and Cape Diary, which I love because it has all the elements that excite me – music, theatre, dance, art and interesting people!

I grew up in Calitzdorp in the Little Karoo, a town known for chickens in the main road and the best Port in the world. There, predictably, as teenager under wide blue skies and bright Karoo stars, I wrote and published my first poetry. I played the piano and the concert flute in the school orchestra and matriculated with music as subject.

After completing a B.Dram degree and HED at the University of Stellenbosch I taught at Stellenbosch High School for two years while enthusiastically writing, directing and producing various plays in a total onslaught on the Kelder and Klein Libertas theatres in Stellenbosch. Then followed a year of living and working in Paris, learning that spoken French hardly resembles written French and experiencing the woes of poverty. Back in Johannesburg, I presented a children’s programme for the SABC, worked as screen writer for Marula Pictures (Generations) in Johannesburg and as dubbing translator/actor (French to Afrikaans).

I moved to Cape Town to raise four children and show them the sea and the mountain. In the Mother City I wrote a couple of radio dramas broadcast on RSG and became the founder of The Futurechild Trust (www.futurechild.co.za). The Full Circle Magazine let me write their children’s section for two years until I took up studying again. I completed my Master’s in Film and Media Studies at UCT in April 2013, with thesis in climate change communication (cum laude). I am currently doing research for a PhD in Education, am involved in the production of a book called Joule – Africa’s First Electric Car and translating the plays of Jennifer Tremblay (La Liste, Le Carrousel, La délivrance) from French into Afrikaans. They will be available at DALRO by the end of 2014.
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Rod MillerI, Rod Miller, have been a presenter at FMR for approximately 13 years, could be more. I have been in corporate business for a number of years doing on-air presenting for the jazz section of FMR during weekends, started off on a Friday midnight till 2am, then moved to Saturday night. I am now presenting on Friday Jazz Lounge 19h00 – 20h00 and more popularly on Sunday Soul Sessions at 22h30 – 00h30.

I also have been working and presenting on retail radio for a number of years and gain enormous on-air radio experience.

Siviwe MinyiMusic from the continent is what drives Siviwe and he can be heard occasionally on FMR.

Siviwe Minyi holds a BA (HDE) from the University of Cape Town and is currently studying towards a masters degree in Media Studies. He spent a number of years working with NGOs in the field of democracy education, justice, reconciliation and HIV & AIDS, including a year working with a South African based donor organisation called Interfund. He is a founder member of Bush Radio and is a pioneer in the emergence of new community media initiatives, both as a trainer and producer.

Siviwe also worked as a trainer for the Gender Education & Training Network (GETNET) where he worked in the Men and Masculinities Program. His extensive experience includes freelance journalism, and developing and implementing marketing strategies for a number of organisations and government departments. As a trainer, Siviwe has a passion for people capacity development. He has started writing his first novel, which looks at life of “migrant” workers living in Gugulethu!

Sandy Munro has been involved in all aspects of horticulture during his professional career.

It has encompassed management, propagation, landscape design and construction. The emphasis of which, has always been on the natural way, the core of his philosophy both in and out of business.

He strongly believes and reminds us, that gardening is primarily an environmental exercise involving all living organisms and should be a natural process with far less importance placed on the ornamental value.

He is involved in radio work and also delivers talks to many forums.

He operates from his home ‘out there’ and spends his free time enjoying both plants and animals in their natural habitat.

He practices as an independent consultant offering a service to both the professional and domestic sectors.